1st Edition

Shakespeare and Historical Formalism

Edited By Stephen Cohen Copyright 2007
252 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

252 Pages
by Routledge

Located at the intersection of new historicism and the 'new formalism', historical formalism is one of the most rapidly growing and important movements in early modern studies: taking seriously the theoretical issues raised by both history and form, it challenges the anti-formalist orthodoxies of new historicism and expands the scope of historicist criticism. Shakespeare and Historical Formalism... Read more
Introduction, Stephen Cohen; Part 1 Historicizing Form; Chapter 1 The Materiality of Shakespearean Form, Douglas Bruster; Chapter 2 Shakespeare, Geography, and the Work of Genre on the Early Modern Stage, Jean E. Howard; Chapter 3 “I would I were at home”: Representations of Dwelling Places and Havens in Cymbeline, Heather Dubrow; Chapter 4 Storm versus Story: Form and Affective Power in Shakespeare’s Romances, Christopher Cobb; Part 2 Re-Forming History; Chapter 5 Crossing from Scaffold to Stage: Execution Processions and Generic Conventions in The Comedy of Errors and Measure for Measure, Marissa Greenberg; Chapter 6 Partial Views: Literary Allusion, Teleological Form, and Contingent Readings in Hamlet, Nicholas Moschovakis; Chapter 7 Formalism and the Problem of History: Sonnets, Sequence, and the Relativity of Linear Time, R.L. Kesler; Chapter 8 Teaching Shakespeare and the Uses of Historical Formalism, Mary Janell Metzger;

Biography

Stephen Cohen is Assistant Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, USA.

'Whither Shakespeare criticism after the new historicism? Cohen argues powerfully for renewed attention to the theoretical and cultural complexities raised by the problem of form, and he has assembled an unusually strong collection of voices to demonstrate how promising a historical formalism can prove to be. ... Cohen’s introduction deserves to be widely cited for its meticulous argument, synthesis of positions, and breadth of reference. A subtle and substantial engagement with a problem whose recent resurgence is long overdue.' Henry S. Turner, author of The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Arts 1580-1630